I thought it might be fun to get Frank on the phone and talk to him about the week's events, which is something that we really can't prepare for, because things are changing so fast, and the outrageous events pile up so quickly that it's hard to keep track of the lies, the truths, the lies about the truths and the truths about the lies. When I scheduled the interview, I must admit, I told him it was conditional on the phones still working. Anyone who remembers the recent outage in northern California when the lines were deliberately cut will know that's no given. (And note that there was never really a satisfactory explantion given for what could well have been an act of terrorism.) You can hear my conversation with Thomas Frank, covering recent events (phone lines permitting) by following the link to the MP3 audio file.
10-01-09: A 2009 Interview With Richard E. Cytowic, M.D. : 'Wednesday is Indigo Blue'
Yes, the second I saw even the title of 1993's 'The Man Who Tasted Shapes' by Richard E. Cytowic, M.D., I knew I had to have the book. The very concept of synesthesia sounded like something out of a science fiction novel. Hearing colors and tasting shapes? It's the very definition of alien.
Cytowic has returned to the subject this year with 'Wednesday is Indigo Blue,' co-written by David Eagleman, author of 'Sum.' When 'The Man Who Tasted Shapes' was released. the idea of synesthesia sounded pretty good to me. Who wouldn’t want to taste shapes or hear colors? But that sort of phenomenon was very hard to document, since it relied on subjective interpretation — until recently. I talked to Cytowic about the ironically changing perception of this perceptual disorder, which, with the advent of brain scanning techniques has become much better understood. We also talked about the cultural perceptions of synesthesia, a disorder that can foster creativity. Is it then truly a disorder? In a science fiction novel, it might be perceived as a precursor to an evolutionary leap; in a comic book, it might be something that one of the X-Men can do. You can hear my conversation with Richard E. Cytowic, M. D., by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
09-30-09: A 2009 Interview with Nick Douglas
"Some of the people in this book are cashiers, college students, homemakers, and they can all be as funny for one sentence as Shakespeare or Dorothy Parker." — Nick Douglas
Nick Douglas will surprise the hell out of you. I frankly did not know what I'd have to say to the editor of 'Twitter Wit,' but it turns out we had quite a bit to talk about and that, as I had hoped, there was quite a bit of very interesting literary thought that can be wrapped around messages of 140 characters or less.
The messages may be 140 characters or less, but the number of characters you can encounter on Twitter, and in print via 'Twitter Wit' are practically endless. Douglas may be young but he's a seasoned Silicon Valley insider who did his time at Valleywag before striking out on his own with 'Twitter Wit.'
I was definitely apprehensive, because while I enjoyed the book, it is, after all, pretty much a book of one-line jokes by writers other than Douglas himself. But as we talked about the process of putting together this book and the implications of the limitations of Twitter, my deliberate ignorance about Twitter (simply put, it's read or tweet, and I go with read) bounced off Douglas' deep knowledge thereof in a most entertaining manner. Instrumental in setting up this interview were the folks over at Booksmith, Christin Evans and Praveen Madan, who went so far as to make their house available for the recording. You can hear our conversation on the future of literature consisting of writing less than 140 characters by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
09-29-09: A 2009 Interview with Jacqueline Winspear : Author of the Maisie Dobbs Series
"It's heartbreaking; you see photographs of this young lad, he's 13 and he's going off to war..." — Jacqueline Winspear
Sometimes, all you need to do is to listen. I met Jackie Winspear at the Book Passage Mystery Conference, and all it took was about a minute of listening to her speak to know, to absolutely know why she was a writer. Her voice was precise and so strong. The stories she told were as well.
I sat down and talked with Winspear about the world of her Maisie Dobbs novels, set in the aftermath of World War One. She evoked not just her research but that world, in the stories she told of combing through archives, of her understanding that she might be the first person to see a particular letter from a soldier in fifty, sixty, eighty years. Like most Americans, I know a bit about WWI; the heroism and the horror, to be sure. But Winspear managed to evoke not just heroes and horrors, but the people in a manner that made them like people I might have met, that turned abstraction in humanity. All in that perfect, powerful voice, which you can hear by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
09-28-09: A 2009 Interview With Karen Armstrong
"At the center of religious life, for all these faiths, was compassion." — Karen Armstrong
As much as I am inclined to distrust organized religion, I still find it a fascination subject to read about. Back in 2006, I read Karen Armstrong's 'The Great Transformation,' an engrossing history of the beginnings of religion. Her latest book, 'The Case for God,' is even more pertinent for these troubled times when religion is such a divisive issue. As I read the book and her elegant, intelligent language unpacked ideas, I could literally feel my ability to think being challenged and changed.
I spoke with Karen Armstrong at KQED studios in San Francisco, on a brilliant autumn afternoon. I had looked a bit into her background and her autobiography 'Up the Spiral Staircase,' and we started at the beginning of her spiritual journey. I wouldn't exactly call her books spiritual, though they explore the ideas of spirituality. Armstrong is a woman with a strong inclination towards logos, which she uses to explore the world of mythos. She's smart and intuitive and utterly compelling. You can hear our conversation by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
09-01-10: Commentary : Tim Pratt Finds 'Sympathy for the Devil' : "...Hell for the company..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Dan Basta at the Blue Ocean Film Festival : "Experiential learning is the way we learn best."
08-31-10: Commentary : Peter S. Beagle Reveals 'The Secret History of Fantasy' : : Telling Lies for a Living
08-30-10: Commentary : David Doubilet Captures 'Water Time Light' : Painting with Pixels
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes : "Everything people have always feared about photography comes true underwater."
08-25-10: Commentary : Vendela Vida 'The Lovers' : Reading and Revelation
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Live Reading and Interview with Vendela Vida At Bookshop Santa Cruz : "...there was an owl that came into this place we were renting one day..."
08-24-10: Commentary : Jeff VanderMeer and 'The Third Bear' : Absurd Is as Absurd Does
08-20-10: Commentary : Joe R. Lansdale Takes 'Deadman's Road' : Deader Than Thou
Agony Column Podcast News Report : On the Phone with Vendela Vida : "You do all this background information, most of which never makes it into the book."
08-19-10: Commentary : Gary Shteyngart Tells a 'Super Sad True Love Story' : Retro-Prescience
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Gary Shteyngart Live Reading and Interview at Bookshop Santa Cruz : "...please like me, this will make up for Hebrew school if all of you like me.."
08-18-10: Commentary : Mark Pilkington Unleashes Weapons of Mass Deception : "ECM+CIA=UFO"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : David Corbett and Barry Eisler for The Agony Column Live at Capitola Book Café, August 7, 2010 Q and A : "This is NewSpeak."
08-16-10: Commentary : Howard Norman Asks 'What is Left the Daughter' : The Past Always Rises
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Howard Norman : "I'd wanted to write from the beginning an epistolary novel; this is just an epistolary novel that's consisting of one letter."
08-12-10: Commentary : James O'Neal Copies 'The Double Human' : Proceeding into the Future
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry Eisler and David Corbett Live at Capitola Book Café on August 7, 2010 : "If anyone thinks it's absurd that the government might assassinate the founder of WikiLeaks, it's quite a bit less absurd than I wish it were".... — Barry Eisler
08-11-10: Commentary : Joe R. Lansdale Takes Huck Finn to 'Dread Island' : "Classics Mutilated"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry Eisler Reads at The Agony Column Live on August 7, 2010 : "...they'll pick up that angle and run interference for us..."
08-10-10: Commentary : David Corbett Asks 'Do They Know I'm Running?' : Crossing Borders
Agony Column Podcast News Report : David Corbett Reads at The Agony Column Live on August 7, 2010 : "These Families are making incredible sacrifices..."
08-09-10: Commentary : David Mitchell and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet : The World is Ever the World
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with David Mitchell : "The periodic table of the human heart is still the same now as it was then."
08-06-10: Commentary : Tim Powers Sails 'On Stranger Tides' : History, Fantasy and the Reality of Reading
08-03-10: Commentary : Robert M. Price Spins 'The Tindalos Cycle' : Terrorize, Horrify, Repeat
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Short Chat with Gary Shteyngart : "...the technology is outpacing our ability to absorb what it is doing to us..."
08-02-10: Commentary : A Second Tour Through 'The Passage' : Sending Characters into Time
07-30-10: Commentary : Subterranean Press and Robert R. McCammon Wake at 'The Wolf's Hour' : The Time Before Cheese
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse : Allegra Goodman, 'The Cookbook Collector,' Noam Shpancer's 'The Good Psychologist' and Elie Wiesel 'The Sonderberg Case'
07-28-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space 2 : En Route, RJ Frith and Peter F. Hamilton
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010: Q & A : "The people you deal with at the publishers ... if they last the end of the week, you're lucky."
07-27-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space : UK Space Opera Demonstrates Excess is Not Enough (Part one, the Arrived)
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010 : "Well, I thought if I do faeries then nobody's going to say that I've got it wrong."
07-26-10: Commentary : Brian and Wendy Froud Seek 'The Heart of Faerie Oracle' : Cards, Books and a New Perspective
I thought it might be fun to get Frank on the phone and talk to him about the week's events, which is something that we really can't prepare for, because things are changing so fast, and the outrageous events pile up so quickly that it's hard to keep track of the lies, the truths, the lies about the truths and the truths about the lies. When I scheduled the interview, I must admit, I told him it was conditional on the phones still working. Anyone who remembers 
